There are many different kinds of audio, visual and audio-visual presentations and activities that people are exposed to every day. These presentations serve as sensory experiences that stimulate our senses and are known to result in biologically based responses that can be measured electronically and mechanically (for example, heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance).
A commonly used approach in making measurements for evaluating these presentations is that of interrogation, wherein the television/media viewer and/or Internet user and/or game player is asked to identify himself or herself as a member of the television/media audience or as an Internet user or as a game player. In connection with television viewing, this inquiry is usually done by means of an electronic prompting and data input device (for example, as in a Portable People Meter by Arbitron, Inc.) associated with a monitored receiver in a statistically selected population and monitoring site. The member identification may also include age, sex, and other demographic data. However, these non-biologically based self-report methods of measuring audience response are known to be highly error prone.
In fact, personal logs are subjective resulting in recall biases, home monitoring devices require event-recording by the person and suffer low compliance, while digital monitoring of cable and internet signals cannot identify which household member or members are in the audience nor can they evaluate the level of responsiveness by those members. Other methods of self-report offer valuable data, but are highly error prone and cannot track the moment-to moment responses to media consumption and participation in interactive activities.
In particular, with the development of the internet and its expansion into many everyday activities, people are constantly exposed to interactive media and activities. Nonetheless, the ability to measure and evaluate the user experience, effectiveness, and the usability of these interactive media has been limited. In fact, current methodologies for measuring or evaluating user experience, effectiveness, and usability of websites and other interactive internet and software media has thus far been limited to traditional self-report and eye-tracking on an individual user basis. These prior art techniques involved asking the individual user questions about the experience and evaluating where the user was looking during the interactive activity.
These prior art systems require advanced knowledge of demographic data prior to the implementation of the system. For example, in order to ensure an audience made of selected demographics and geographic regions, the audience must be prescreened to identify individuals and households within the specific geographic regions and within the specified demographic categories. Thus, the only alternative is to select individuals and households at random. However, selecting individuals and households at random does not guarantee that certain demographics and/or geographic areas are available for research.
The majority of systems acquiring biologically based signals for measuring the performance of content stimuli are laboratory-based where participants are brought in to a testing facility and their biologically-based signals are acquired using specialized equipment while watching target content. While attempts have been made to gather EEG data in home environments, compliance by the targeted audience is difficult because there is no guarantee as to whether or not the signals collected remotely are from the targeted person or another member of the household.
Accordingly, the challenges of the current methods and systems include, but are not limited to: (1) security (due to the content being provided over the internet or through a home monitoring device which then creates the possibility of an audience member recording and subsequently distributing the content); (2) carefully selected distribution mandatory (in order to reach a wide array of people and fulfill targeted demographics); (3) errors (due to the heavy reliance on self-reporting); and verification of compliance with study parameters (such as whether the data collected is from the targeted demographic); (5) associated costs with (a) lab-based methods (bringing the audience into the lab are very high) and (b) home-based audience monitoring (the costs of ensuring compliance are high), and for both (a) and (b) ensuring a geographic distribution is not easy and could compound the associated costs); and (6) determination of invalid signals is unavailable until post-processing (which requires additional steps and increases costs).
Thus, a need in the art exists for a system and method that is capable of integrating self-report and physiological data and capable of secure distribution. In addition, a need exists for an efficient and cost-effective system and method that is capable of integrating self-report and physiological data that can ensure a wide geographic distribution to an audience. Finally, a need exists for a system that is capable of providing results from a wide variety of demographic categories when monitoring unconscious biological responses and other responses to track performance of target stimuli.